Musso & Frank's

I was watching the latest iteration of the newest season of Bosch, or whatever they’re calling it now, and they titled an episode “Musso & Frank.” It’s only one scene in the episode, a pivotal scene, but still, only one.

I meditated on this, as I tend to do, and later thought this was warranted. The scope of Los Angeles is enormous. It’s 44 miles wide and diverse in every way - geography, topography, ethnicity, and identity. To outsiders, I suppose, LA is most closely identified with Hollywood. And no restaurant still standing is more Hollywood than The Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard. There are as many Musso & Frank stories as LA neighborhoods.

Musso’s has been featured in countless movies and series, dating back to Buster Keaton’s Cops in 1922 - 3 years after they opened. More recently, Quentin Tarantino featured the restaurant in his latest opus, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, in a scene featuring Al Pacino, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

I am sure Musso’s is filmed so often because people who make movies eat and drink here. Before Fettuccini Alfredo turned into that goopy dish served with unlimited breadsticks, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had brought the recipe back to Musso’s from Rome, where they first tried the dish at Chef Alfredo di Lelio’s restaurant in 1927. His version is still served here today.

The writers who have frequented Musso’s over the years are in the pantheon of American Literature. The acerbic Dorothy Parker drank here, along with Fitzgerald as he drank himself to death in Hollywood, and Faulkner, who was said to have worked on manuscripts in the Back Room, sitting with his mistress and mixing his own Mint Juleps.

My favorite movie featuring Musso’s is The Long Goodbye, starring Elliot Gould and directed by Robert Altman in 1973. It is based on the detective novel featuring Phillip Marlowe, written by Raymond Chandler, who also drank and wrote at Musso’s.

Legendary Musso bartender-poet Sonny Donato (who played a bartender in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) wrote about Chandler’s novel, “I’ve read this book once every ten years; the book never changes, but we do. What seems pertinent at one time may now seem obscure.”

The Back Room is gone, but they moved the actual bar to the New Room, which is the front of the restaurant.

Musso’s layout, like most things here, gives no pretense to modern ideas. There is a front door on Hollywood Boulevard, but parking is valet and in the back, so most people enter that way. It’s a bit of a maze to navigate, and when you emerge into the dining room, you emerge into a beautiful, vibrant chaos.

The dining room booths are still leather and enveloped in wood-paneled dividers so high that they create an almost private space for each booth. I suspect this was a part of the attraction, the privacy when some movie mogul wanted to discuss a project or have dinner with someone he wasn’t married to.

The dining room and The New Room are bifurcated by a counter, which is first-come, first-served, and an excellent alternative to the white tablecloth experience - especially if you’re visiting on a Thursday for the legendary Chicken Pot Pie.

The New Room is home to Musso’s famous bar, booths, and tables where people can be seen. If you spot the restaurant on film, it’s most often in this space.

You can get a seat at the bar if you come early, but mostly, it’s standing room only, two deep behind every stool.

Most come for the martinis. The first thing you’ll notice is they come in a small glass. These are stirred martinis, never shaken. The restaurant has said, “James Bond was wrong.” The olives are cured in-house. The best part? The drink comes with a sidecar - a little carafe with the rest of your drink that rests in a mini ice bucket. Your martini stays super cold from start to finish.

Unless you plan to get as drunk as Fitzgerald, you should eat something. The red-jacketed waiters can help you navigate the classic grill menu.

Sourdough bread and butter, a shrimp cocktail, and steak tartare are a good start. There is a wide selection of steaks and fish, grilled simply, but you can order sauce as a side.

When the restaurant opened in 1919, it was called Frank’s Cafe until he took on a partner named Joseph Musso. The duo sold the restaurant in 1927 to Italian immigrants Joseph Carissimi and John Mosso (yeah, weird, no relation), who moved the restaurant next door to its present location.

All this Italian heritage has given the menu an “Italian section,” which includes the Fettucini Alfredo mentioned earlier, Tagliatelle Bolognese, or a terrific Risotto Ai Frutti Di Mare with shrimp, scallops, and calamari. I love any place where you can get pasta with your steak instead of potatoes. I’m not Irish.

Finish your meal with a stack of flannel cakes if you can. They’re like crepe pancakes, served with strawberries and whipped cream.

I live in the South Bay, near our beach cities, outside LA proper. I like it that way; it’s slow, and most Angelenos don’t want to visit us. But visiting Musso’s is like an instant dose of everything fascinating about our City.

I was once helping a friend celebrate a big birthday. She hosted a party on the roof of a swanky Hollywood hotel. Hollywood things were going on there. A person who was famous for things he shouldn’t have bragged about, his date, a woman who seemed to be missing half of her outfit, and another friend of ours who is in the music business. Our friend had to leave “early” at nearly 11 PM. He had a meeting with a well-known musician, who he told me always wanted to meet at Musso’s. “He always wants to meet at Musso’s. It doesn’t change.”

While writing this, I asked another friend, “Why Musso’s?” She is a frequent patron and a brilliant human, and she answered, “It remained true to itself and resisted pressures to be something it wasn’t. That’s what makes it a classic.”

Just go. Stop arguing with me.

Musso & Frank Grill

6667 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028

5 PM - 11 PM most days, Closed Mondays

mussoandfrank.com

(323) 467-7788